Have the LA Dodgers struck out?

Mad Joe Manchin yells at journos

Senator Joe Manchin is furious — and he’s letting reporters know.

Sources close to the West Virginia senator tell Cockburn that Manchin is fuming over a recent article in Fox News giving credit to House Republicans, and not Manchin, for the approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline. The new major pipeline could help Manchin politically as he faces a perilous path to reelection next year.

“Manchin is furiously calling reporters himself to push back on it,” according to a West Virginia source, despite that “the truth is that he played a relatively minor role in finally getting MVP done.” 

Fox followed up on its Manchin piece by reporting a phone interview that Manchin did with a Fox journalist — but that phone call was far more heated than Fox’s coverage would suggest.

“I mean, my God, for the whole year I’ve had the living crap beat out of me, back and forth and everything,” Manchin said in the Fox story; the embattled senator called accusations that Republicans in the House helped shepherd the MVP in the must-pass debt ceiling bill “bullshit.” His language certainly seems to imply that he was heated; his anger over this story has been making the rounds on Capitol Hill.

Recent polling shows Manchin underwater with voters in his home state; Cockburn previously reported that Manchin is eyeing the presidency of West Virginia University. At least Manchin didn’t call Cockburn to scream at him after he scooped that news in his May 19 gossip column…

Have the LA Dodgers struck out?

The Los Angeles Dodgers sparked outrage with their decision to re-invite the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” a group of queer and trans “nuns” that uses mockery of Catholic iconography to raise funds for LGBTQ charities. Now, several MLB players are speaking out, including some on the Dodgers roster. Star pitcher Clayton Kershaw said he urged his ball club to bring back the organization’s Christian Faith and Family Day, adding that he doesn’t agree with “making fun of a religion.” Pitcher Blake Treinen released a statement saying the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence “promotes hate of Christians and people of faith.” Washington Nationals pitcher Trevor Williams also weighed in, asserting that he is “deeply troubled” by the Dodgers’ decision to honor the queer group.

Anyone familiar with the sport of baseball knows that MLB players are a heavily Christian group, so it wouldn’t surprise Cockburn to see more players come out against the Dodgers in the next couple of weeks before “Pride Night.” And unlike many other MLB teams, people actually used to go and watch the Dodgers. However, speaking up is clearly not without risk. Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Anthony Bass was forced to record a hostage video after he re-posted a meme in favor of recent boycotts of Bud Light and Target…

Top Texas lawyers to lead Ken Paxton impeachment

Over last weekend, the Republican attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, was impeached following allegations of illicit affairs, fraud, corruption, payoffs and abuse of office, by a bipartisan margin of 121-23. And the state legislature isn’t messing around: they’ve tapped top Texas lawyers Dick DeGuerin and Rusty Hardin to serve as lead prosecutors.

DeGuerin’s client list includes David Koresh of the Waco siege, cricket fraudster Allen Stanford and murderer Robert Durst, while Hardin has represented massage enthusiast DeShaun Watson, the Osteens and J. Howard Marshall, the millionaire who Anna Nicole Smith married shortly before his death. Given those résumés, a little impeachment trial sounds like a walk in the park…

Wife support

Paxton will need to keep in his wife’s good books to have a decent chance of remaining in office: Angela Paxton is a Texas state senator who will have a vote in deciding his fate, which, given his supposed affair, may prove tricky. No wonder the Texas AG was so eagerly posting happy family pictures over Memorial Day Weekend when he was impeached…

Roe woes deepen

Top DeSantis consultant Jeff Roe, also known as the campaign “Hamburglar,” is at it again. Roe and several of his consulting firms are named in a lawsuit in Nevada that accuses him of fraudulent business practices. The Community Schools Initiative says Roe failed to gather at least 140,000 valid signatures for a school board-related petition, despite taking $2.2 million in payment for the project. In addition, Roe is alleged to have knowingly delivered tons of fraudulent and forged signatures. After promising a signature validity rate of 70 percent, Roe supposedly only delivered a 53.2 percent validity rate and failed to give the Community Schools Initiative a refund.

Roe’s other trials and tribulations have been covered extensively by Cockburn, including the scuttlebutt that Roe had ghosted one client, Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin, and that he hilariously mismanaged Kelly Craft’s campaign for Kentucky governor. Even though she dominated the GOP primary field in spending, she finished in a distant third.

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